May 2

The last major update to Guardians of Orion was in December 2016. I wanted to go into that a bit and then more importantly talk about the future of the game, including a brand new update dropping this year.

After we had made it to the Official Release (GOO Version 2.0) a few of us had parted ways. It was a strenuous and intense development and in the end I think everyone needed some time away to recollect.

During this time me and Frankie formed a new focus group called DANKIE which we are working on migrating everything towards. For future products this will allow development to be more internal/localized and focus on new technologies and frameworks. In addition to this we’ve also had a lot of former talent from both SPIRAL and TREK come aboard to assist us on current and upcoming productions, acting as a reunion of sorts.

To celebrate development starting back up for Guardians of Orion we wanted to discuss a bit more about our first attempt (Phase 1), what we learned and where we hope everything is headed from here on.

SOME PROBLEMS

There were some problems with Guardians of Orion development Phase 1 due to my Hiring, Design, Political and Communication aspects. Other issues had compounded from these problems.

CROWDFUNDING

The communication problem stems from using models or platforms such as: Indie, Crowdfunding and Early Access where you need to talk about a games direction, future/possible content and more. There were a variety of these types of discussions all over Social Media, Kickstarters and on Steam Updates.

While this is usually (mostly) fine as either the project is successfully funded and fans hold them accountable based on funds received/stretch goals hit OR the project fails to fund and typically vanishes out to never be heard from again.

Unfortunately the support never came and this was mixed with other significant issues involving some poor hiring choices I had made and some bad feature/tech integration that ended up with extreme consequences on the player-experience side of things.

While I understand frustrations by GOO fans as they were systems we very much wanted in place, it unfortunately doesn't change the fact or nature of these systems or the overall product performance of Guardians of Orion from the very start. It was never self-sustaining, all crowdfunding events had failed (2014, 2015, 2016) and this is something we openly and candidly talked about since October 2015, before the game was even on sale. We continued to cover this during the first year of updates.

[ Trek Industries, Facebook, October 15, 2015 ]

"Guardians of Orion will release no matter what. I've funded the Early Access version (2015) as well as much of the immediate post-release content, including: some weapons, more guardians, new creatures/dinosaurs, more maps and more. We hope the game will sell reasonably well and will of course then use the profits received to grow the game to where we want it to be as well as begin funding some of our next (massive) projects."

PROUD

While a ton of content that we wanted to develop was never able to make it in we are still extremely proud of Guardians of Orion as a consumer product for as low as $1. There are dozens to even hundreds of hours of great friend-based gameplay and it was only ever difficult from a production or development standpoint due to how much we invested and wanted to do.

We've given closure to fans of Guardians of Orion 1 but to be honest I have always been personally hopeful that GOO could receive another update from a variety of reasons, ie becomes self-sustaining, lowered server costs, increased sales/support or another one of our products becoming profitable to the point that we could do it regardless.

THE RIGHT DESIGN (2017+)

Over time we have constantly worked on designs for a GOO1 update and it was simply a matter of finding the right design. We are very pleased to state that we have found a design that we are happy with.

GOO 2018 UPDATE (“PHASE 2”)

VERSION 2.1 is officially announced and in development, scheduled for Summer 2018. We will continue to keep you updated as things progress.

We have three simple focuses with this update which we are simply calling the start of this “PHASE 2” in hopes that it will be just that:1. Encourage existing owners to return.2. Attract new owners.3. Quality of Life improvements.

We're very excited for this, so much so that we are putting other internal developments on a temporary hiatus to tackle this with full force. I will be personally returning to do work on this as well.

We hope that with the update and the help of community and any press that this can possibly become more than a one last hurrah thing. We'd love for it to become self-sustaining and the opportunity to add some fan favorite content such as stretch goal items like mechs, bikes, boards and more leading up to the showcased concept of v3.0. This is the best case scenario. Worst case scenario we at least get to do another update for any fans of the game, ourselves included.

GAME SURGERY

I can confirm that most surgical aspects won't happen until a theoretical v2.3 based on v2.1 and v2.2 performance. v2.1 is simply focused on working with what is already there and bettering that experience before stacking any new blocks on top. Version 2.2 will introduce new content.

VERSION 2.1 - QUALITY OF LIFE

We want to focus on the many tweaks, adjustments and quality-of-life improvements within v2.1:

We want to discuss a few immediate plans we have for any other updates we have the opportunity of delivering based on the performance and support of v2.1 and v2.2. These are subject to change but should give a good idea of where we want to head:

Although development on Guardians of Orion wrapped sooner than we would have preferred it's still an incredible title to own and we were able to accomplish a ton of things we had wanted or were stretch goals initially. What started as a Top-Down, TwinStick Shooter evolved into so much more and now there are great features such as weekly/daily events, gear/loot/progression and of course much more varied gameplay than what it initially began with.

It's been commented that if GOO1 were to become self-sustaining there would be talks of organizing one last hurrah but nothing has been announced or cemented yet so upgrades or purchases like such would attribute to something like that :)

LOYALTY DISCOUNTS

If you own ORION: Prelude or Guardians of Orion on Steam you can become eligible to save up to 75% on future products such as Guardians of Orion 2 and ORION: Prelude 2. Join the Official ORION Discord for more information:https://discord.gg/RykWMpC

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About This Game

'ORION: Prelude' is an indie Sci-Fi shooter (FPS/TPS) that seamlessly blends together incredible visuals and addictive combat. It puts you and your friends together into intense, cinematic battles using some of the most incredible weaponry and amazing vehicles in which you must work or compete against one another to accomplish mission objectives, explore giant worlds and survive the devastating Dinosaur Horde.

In addition to the return of the adventurous, survival-based cooperative gameplay and retro-inspired Arena Combat, 'ORION: Prelude' features massive, Open World Cooperative and PvPvE.